Alessandro Del Sole, author of Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed, continues his four-part series introducing the HTML client in Visual Studio LightSwitch 2012. Part 3 shows how easily you can deploy a rich mobile business application to the Windows Azure platform. Owners of small businesses should definitely consider this opportunity.

From the author of

From the author of

Introduction

Part 2 of this series discussed a number of important ways to customize the HTML client in Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch, including user authentication. After you've designed, customized, and tested your application, you're probably ready to deploy it to a production environment. However, instead of hosting your applications on the traditional in-house, on-premises server, have you considered publishing them to Windows Azure, the cloud computing platform from Microsoft? Because Windows Azure services are pay-per-use, you pay only for the resources you actually consume. This option can help small businesses avoid having to buy and maintain a physical infrastructure, or needing to hire staff to manage their servers and data.

NOTE

This article reuses the sample application from Part 1 of this series. Read that article first if you don't have the sample project ready.

We won't cover Windows Azure's details and benefits. Check out the Azure site for that information, as well as related services, pricing, and so on. This article will show you how to take your applications live on the Internet in just a few minutes with the help of LightSwitch and Windows Azure.

To use the techniques described in this article, you need a Windows Azure subscription and a Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) to activate your subscription. If you already have a subscription, you can skip to the next section and get started on this article's procedure. If you don't have a Windows Azure subscription, you can activate a free trial subscription that will expire in one month. The free trial offers all the required services to publish a LightSwitch HTML application, as well as providing additional tools and services (including virtualization) that you can test in various contexts. (Be sure to read all the subscription terms before activating.)